Natty Bumpercar: oh woe is me woe is me woe is me it is that time of year when all of the beautiful sparkly baubles go away the lights the trees the ornaments all the fancy doodads and it makes me so sad because i love fancy doodads why did you know in school in my yearbook i was labeled the one who likes fancy doodads the most did you know that my middle name is sparkly doodad bumper car it's not but guys it's it's hard because we just went through all the big holidays you had your thanksgivings you had all this stuff in december we had new year's and now we're just in june january oh january it's this cold month that's just here and it's fine it's good i'm not gonna knock january why one of my sweet beautiful children was born in january but it's it's it's it's not the best month because i mean what do i yeah all the fun stuff just to happen now we gotta wait we gotta wait for what's the next thing valentine's day all right did you know i was at the grocery store the other day and uh they were taking all the christmas stuff down so this was december 26th and they were putting the valentine's day stuff up in december and i was just like no grocery store i will not buy your heart-shaped candies yet not until february 12th in a rush a mad rush that's when i get my cards and whatnot you know here's the thing it made me think of time and and i read i there was a cool uh little not slogan little saying call it says time is a flat circle and i was like what does that mean what is a flat what does that mean like a flat circle i guess if it was a 3d circle it would be a ball but time is a flat circle and so it was just kind of like the things that you have done will come back around and you'll do them again and again and again throughout your entire life i don't and i don't know really what the point of it is i guess it's just to say to pay attention you know also time is not linear what does linear mean it means like a straight line so time can fold back on you on itself and i know that doesn't make any sense but time is weird if you think about it you know you're born you live you do your life and then you're in you go away i guess i don't know i don't know what happens i haven't been there yet but you have memories and you have nostalgia and what that is is when the holidays come and maybe you smell a candle that smells like a tree and then you have another time that you smelled a candle that smelled like a tree and the time kind of folds in on itself and your memories and the older you get your memories they all build up right and so sometimes they start to get a little bit combined um especially my brain loves to conflate things what does conflate mean it means to just kind of squish things together a little bit sometimes unintended it's like how i uh you know i'll look at our dog popcorn who's uh 10 months old beagle black lab maybe you've met her i hope you have and uh just seeing her uh the way she'll run in the backyard sometimes will uh make me have little flashbacks to memories of irving brown socks my my puppy dog uh and then i start to think about things that socks did but things that popcorn did and then i can't remember which of the dogs actually did that thing and then i start to conflate them and then i just put them in the uh dog folder in my brain i'm like well that's a dog activity i'm just gonna put it in the dog box this is where the memories of dog things go and sometimes if it gets jostled or shaken up or moved around i'm just gonna put it in the dog box and then i start to think about then uh you know maybe one of the two of the thoughts will get a little confused um now that's a funny thing because it can get confusing have you ever had deja vu do you know what that is deja vu is super cool that's when you're doing something and then you kind of your brain goes wait a minute haven't i been here before haven't i done this thing before already wasn't i already in this exact spot or you know somebody will say to you like uh uh oh i'll have a fruit smoothie and you're like yeah you will how did i know you were gonna say that i feel like i've been in this very moment already and i don't know what deja vu is is it just your mind working quicker than the world around it is it just you know maybe you were kind of not focused not paying attention and then you come back to the world and it's kind of overwhelming and your brain is just like ah this is that okay here we are and this is what's happening i don't know is it is it uh shadows of whispers of memories of of things that are happening i don't know i don't know we're not learning i mean we're learning all kinds of fun stuff what we learned so far time is a flat circle time is not linear the one i just said deja vu that one conflation that was a big one to learn today um but so the older you get it's it's it's fun even my kids they uh you know 10 and 7 they they they will get nostalgic for things in their past i mean emerson's only 10 years old but he'll be like oh i remember the good old days remember the good old days i'm like what is the good old what does that mean to you what are the good old days you're 10 years old all your days have been pretty good what are the what are the good old days he's like ah the good old days where we lived in the brown house i'm like ah yes the brown house uh emerson has a a few touchstones uh that he likes to his memories go back to they flow back to and the brown house is one of them remember the brown house dad and i'm like yeah you were four how do you like what kind of foundational memories were you making at the brown house i remember the brown house was cold i remember the brown house was uh uh dark and it had um those cave crickets in the basement what are cave crickets they're horrifying monstrous little bugs that have these four legs and when they bounce they go boom like that and they're aggressive they'll come at you they're not bugs that are like i'm gonna scurry away i don't want to see people no they're bugs that are like like hey hey hey you hey hey you're like no no thank you i don't want no thank you please no go away bug not a fan not a fan when we used to live in georgia this was pre-children uh i had to do a lot of work under our house we had a crawl space a crawl space is a space under a house uh it's usually like three i think ours is maybe two and a half three feet so not not not a lot dirt you know it's the the ground is under the house dirt yucky dirt dirt dirt dirt and i had to go under there and clean out the whole space take everything that was out in there out and then i put in uh a new uh i put stuff called lime which is just some stuff you put in the dirt i don't know it changes the ph what does that mean i don't know so i was told to do and then i had to put this new liner on the ground to keep the moisture from the ground away from the house and as i'm doing all this work by myself in the dark these crickets would come at me constantly like boing boing boing what are you doing boing what are you doing boing what are you doing boing and i was just like please leave me alone i couldn't even sit up in there so i'd have to roll away from them and they would follow me and they were faster at hopping than i was at rolling and it was just not pleasant it was just not pleasant at all i'm hoping that that is not something if time is in fact a flat circle that is going to come around to me again and again i don't want to have any more confrontation i don't want to have any more confrontation i don't with cave crickets don't want to at all back to the point and time use it preciously use it wisely don't dawdle get as much stuff done as you can don't overextend yourself because if you do you might get sick and i don't want you to get tired okay i want you to live to your potential with and use your time as best you can and i don't want you to get tired okay i want you to live to your best as you can make yourself happy do good things for yourself do good things for other people use your time wisely right right this has become a motivational speech and i'm fine with that time is not infinite your your your time is finite finite finite finite infinite finite finite no finite uh what does that mean that means there's a beginning and there's an end so use all the time that you have as best as you can and and it'll be great it'll be great even if you have to rest a little bit that's still using your time just be cognizant be aware that you're using your time it'll be good it'll be good i uh i was reading all these quotes like famous people quotes and it was just they were all basically like um you know what was it uh this is uh charles darwin said a man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life okay so don't waste your time charles we got it charles darwin one day you should look him up he's cool he went to the galapagos islands there were turtles there there's more to them but that's that's that's just the high notes we're just hitting the high notes guy named uh let's see thomas jefferson you ever heard of him he's a big name says determined never to be idle no person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any it is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing so just do stuff i mean these guys are much wordier than i am i'm basically like uh you should do some stuff maybe you should do some stuff like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know like that but um anyway guys you know what i'm gonna go be nostalgic about my my my baubles my tree my christmas lights i'm gonna go uh clean up the glitter that fell on the ground as i was moving things oh and i'm gonna tell you one one more quick story so in our house here at headquarters every year the uh when it's time to take the tree down we take we have to take everything off the tree we take all the ornaments we take the lights off and uh then the tree wolf comes out of the forest and he takes our tree and he drags it back into the forest and i don't know what happens after that do you guys have a tree wolf where does your tree go how did who how does your tree leave the house my kids they some of them they were like dad you take the tree out and i was just like that's not even possible i can't pick this tree up it's too big doesn't even fit through the door the tree wolf does it and the worst thing about the tree wolf is that when he drags the tree out of the house he leaves all the needles everywhere the tree wolf is not a clean wolf he's a dirty wolf but anyway collecting trees for all these years out in the forest out in the woods i don't know what his plan is i don't know what his angle is but i know the tree wolf means business and i do too and you do too you know why because you're the bumper podcast cateers and it's a new year new year what does that mean we're getting stickers made pretty soon i'll tell you how you can get a sticker so just keep listening keep being awesome i love you you're my best friend all right